March 2, 2001

ravel and unravel

I recently discovered that the words ravel and unravel mean the same thing. How can this be?

It's worse than you think. Not only can ravel and unravel mean the same thing, 'to disentangle; unweave; disentwine; come apart' (as the threads of a cloth or the plans of a conspiracy), but ravel itself can mean its own opposite! That is, it also means 'to tangle or entangle'. Threads that were previously neat (aligned, coiled, etc.) can become raveled--i.e., twisted and knotted. It is easy to see how the ambiguity could arise, since as fabric frays the loose threads become at the same time disentangled from the fabric and entangled with each other. This potential confusion appears to have existed from the beginning; the word comes from the Dutch rafelen or ravelen, said to mean 'to unweave; fray; tangle' (from rafel or ravel 'a thread').

But to explain why we have both ravel and unravel, we have to examine the prefix un-. When affixed to verbs, its most common purpose is to reverse their meanings, a function it has had since Old English. Middle English saw such formations as unbend, uncover, unhasp, still in use today. In fact un- in this sense is so productive that it lends itself to spontaneous formations, some of them "nonce" or one-time-only verbs. It can be attached to virtually any verb representing an action that can be undone: "You hired that person? Well, go unhire him!"

Far more rarely, the prefix is not reversive but redundant. From Middle English we have unloose, and Modern English (16th century) added unthaw, which essentially mean the same thing as the verbs loose and thaw. Redundant un- has taken on the function of intensifying the force of the verb. With unravel, however, it is difficult to determine whether we have un- reversing the 'tangle' sense of ravel or intensifying the 'untangle' sense.

Centuries of usage of ravel would seem to point to the latter. Almost without exception, a search for ravel through old and new writings yielded the sense that is synonymous with unravel. From University Reform: an Address to the Alumni of Harvard, at Their Triennial Festival, July 19, 1866, a literal use: "And before new armies in hostile encounter on American soil shall unfurl new banners to the breeze, may every thread and thrum of their texture ravel and rot and resolve itself into dust!" From an 1875 issue of Scribners Monthly, the metaphorical sense of untangling: "Then the General retired, went to his house and found his carriage waiting, and, in less than an hour, was absorbed in raveling the snarled affairs connected with his recent disastrous speculation" (J. G. Holland, "The Story of Sevenoaks"). I found only one citation, in a recent book review, that used ravel in the 'tangle' sense. "In 'Speak You Also', which is eloquently translated from the French by Linda Coverdale with Bill Ford, Steinberg cryptically ravels and unravels his past" (Susan Shapiro, The New York Times).

On the other hand, un- is so rarely the redundant (or intensifying) prefix that we tend overwhelmingly to perceive it as the reversive one. That is why you were perplexed enough to ask your question and why the rest of us still wonder at such anomalies as unloose and unthaw. And the very earliest citations in the OED for ravel (1585-1600) are for the now rare sense of 'entangle', with unravel appearing shortly thereafter (1603), just barely before the first known occurrence of the 'disentangle' sense of ravel (1606). Consequently, most major dictionaries have concluded that what we have in unravel is the un- that reverses. That would mean that the prefix serves to reverse the less common, or 'entangle', sense of ravel. Unravel that if you can.

Enid